Educational practitioners and innovators who are passionate about education now have a new opportunity to develop, strengthen and fund their start-up through the Open Education Challenge, a new European-wide initiative by P.A.U. Education and ARMAT Group.
Applications are open until March 17 and can be submitted from anyone, anywhere, in the world.
Applicants can be aspiring entrepreneurs or existing start-ups in the first stages of development. The submissions are expected to be diverse: online education platforms, interactive apps on different subjects, assessment tools… and hopefully some unexpected ideas as well! The objective of the initiative is to support the selected projects through their initial development with the intention of launching them as viable businesses. To this end, we have gathered investors to support the entrepreneurs from day one.
The Open Education Challenge will select the 10 most promising start-ups to join the European Incubator for Innovation in Education. A European jury, chaired by Lord Puttnam (Atticum Education, Ireland’s Digital Champion, etc.), will make the selections. The incubation process will offer the participants several forms of business development support:
- up to 20,000€ of initial seed funding and access to the Open Education Investment Club
- 12 weeks of intensive mentoring and coaching in successive European hubs of innovation: Barcelona, Paris, London, Berlin and Helsinki
- support from Europe’s top experts in education, technology and entrepreneurship
Pierre-Antoine Ullmo, founder of P.A.U. Education, explained the motivation behind the Challenge:
“We want to create an ecosystem that will allow the entrepreneurs, the innovators, to stay in Europe – to develop their ideas in Europe, to connect with investors, and to connect with education specialist and researchers.”
Xavier Prats Monné, Deputy Director-General for Education and Culture at the European Commission, commented on the advantages of organizing the Challenge in Europe:
“There are already many things happening in Europe in innovation, but I think Europe has this particularity of having at the same time a great heritage of culture, a great heritage of education, and a great heritage of technology. And I think that the mixture between culture, education, and technology is the essence of innovation. This is why Europe is a great place to be for innovators.”
The Incubator’s Partners are Aalto University, the cutting edge university in Helsinki where science and art meet technology and business; Iversity Berlin, Germany’s most innovative online education specialists; and ESCP Europe, the leading European business school recognized for its cross-cultural business education.
This private initiative is designed by P.A.U. Education and Armat Group. Based in Barcelona, P.A.U. Education is a major contributor to innovative learning in Europe; it operates the Open Education Europa portal and is the co-organiser of the European Stakeholders MOOCs Summit. Armat Group is a privately-owned investment company based in Luxembourg determined to help finance the development of innovative companies in education.
The Open Education Challenge is under the patronage of Mrs Androulla Vassiliou, member of the European Commission.
For more information, please visit www.openeducationchallenge.eu
